Microsoft To Release New Certification

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At the Project Management Institute's Congress event in Seattle this week,attendees will have the MCSA Certification opportunity to take a look at Microsoft's soon-to-be-released Office Project 2007 software. They'll also have a chance to hear about some new project management-oriented credentials coming out of Redmond, Wash., next year.
At the PMI conference next week, we're announcing three new Microsoft certifications around (Office) Project and project management,Rob Linsky, Microsoft

senior production manager for certification.Two of those certifications are product/technology-focused, and they'll fall in the technology spectrum, and then

one of them will be a professional-series certification that will exist at that pro level.
Linsky said the first technology-focused certification will deal with using Microsoft Office Project 2007 for desktop client-managed projects, while the

second will cover using Office Project Server 2007 to manage multiple complex projects. The third credential is designed for project managers and program

managers, ...
... who handle multiple complex projects in a large-enterprise environment.
Additionally, the new certifications will align to PMI's Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) standard.
We're basically taking their framework and methodology and intertwining that with our tool,Linsky said.What (PMI) has done is defined how their framework can

be applied with project management tools like Office Project. They've set up a framework that we're plugging into. Other project management tools providers

are free to do that, as well.
Microsoft's new project management certifications don't have official titles yet (expect an announcement on that sometime next month),but the company has

given a lot of consideration to the concepts mcitp enterprise administrator behind them thus far.
Microsoft Learning has thought about this for a long time because in most cases, project management issues are one of the key barriers to success and

efficiency with our technologies in the marketplace,Linsky said. We've been prodded by our internal partners, product groups and service organizations to

come up with something. We've been doing quite a bit of research and investigation on this in the past several months. It was important to have some things

nailed down for this event, and the fact that we're moving forward with it shows that some of those decisions have been made.
Although they certainly seem to excel in ownership of such items, CIOs apparently do not give electronics or technical gadgets as gifts, according to a

recent poll by IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology.
The poll saw Robert Half drawing responses from more than 1,400 CIOs from a stratified random sample of U.S. companies with 100 or more employees. It asked:

“Do you plan to give technology-based products such as computers, electronics or technology gadgets as gifts for the holidays?”
Sixty-four percent of respondents said no.
John Estes, Robert Half Technology vice president, said he feels this figure reflects not so much the gift-giving tastes of CIOs but rather the price tag of

the items themselves.
“These little gadgets,they’re not so inexpensive,”Estes said.“In the old days, you could give someone a Walkman,and that was considered high-tech.

You give someone a Walkman these days,and they’ll laugh at you.If it’s not a Treo or a BlackBerry or an iPod with all the ccna exam bells and whistles, it’s not much of a gadget.”Estes also said giving high-tech items as gifts in an office environment presents a problem with respect to the equitable treatment of all employees.